Legal Scholar and Solo Practitioner
Jack received his B.A. in History from the University of Virginia in 1977, graduating with Highest Distinction. After graduating Yale Law School in 1980, he served active duty in the U.S. Army's JAG Corps, rising to the rank of Major, where he represented the United States in more than 250 cases.
He practiced for a decade as an Associate for Bradley Arant in Birmingham, Alabama. He proudly served the State of Alabama in the Office of the Attorney General, both as Deputy and Assistant Attorney General, handling complex civil and criminal litigation cases for the people of Alabama. In 2000, he won the "Best Brief Award" from the National Association of Attorneys General for his brief in a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, James Alexander v. Martha Sandoval – a case he won. He was Special Assistant to the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service, Visiting Legal Fellow for the Center for Judicial and Legal Studies for the Heritage Foundation, Of Counsel at Strickland Brockington Lewis, a solo practitioner, and General Counsel for Indigo Energy.
Most recently, he "re-upped" for military service, volunteering his legal services to the Georgia State Defense Force where twice each month he provided legal services for National Guardsmen who were being deployed. He wore his military uniform for the last time in October 2024.
Jack Park passed away on March 16, 2026.
Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland "Buck" Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
Carissa Byrne Hessick joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2016. She serves as the Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland “Buck” Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and as the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Her teaching and research interests include criminal law, the structure of the criminal justice system, criminal sentencing, and child pornography crimes. Hessick is the author of multiple law review articles, essays, and op eds on plea bargaining, the powers and selection of prosecutors, Sixth Amendment sentencing rights, and criminal statutes. Her work has appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the L.A. Times, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. She founded the Prosecutors and Politics Project in 2018. And she currently serves as the Reporter for the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Sentencing Standards Task Force.
Hessick attended Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and winner of the Potter Stewart Prize for the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge Barbara S. Jones on the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the D.C. Circuit. She also worked as a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City. Before joining the faculty at Carolina Law, Hessick taught on the faculties at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. She also spent two years as a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Counsel to Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Thaya Brook Knight was associate director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. She is an attorney with extensive experience in securities regulation, small business capital access, and capital markets. Before joining Cato, she co-founded and served as general counsel of CrowdCheck, a company providing due diligence and disclosure services in the online investing market. Following the recent financial crisis, she served as investigative counsel for the congressional oversight panel charged with overseeing the expenditure of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. She also spent several years with the Washington office of the law firm WilmerHale, where her practice focused on securities litigation, securities enforcement defense, and corporate investigations.
She holds a BA from Middlebury College and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School.
President, The Ethics and Public Policy Center
Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In May 2025, Anderson was appointed by President Trump to the Religious Liberty Commission.
He is the author or co-author of five books, including the just-released Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. Previous books include When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination. He is the co-editor of A Liberalism Safe for Catholicism? Perspectives from “The Review of Politics.”
Anderson’s research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, in two Supreme Court cases.
He received his bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and he received his doctoral degree in political philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation was titled: “Neither Liberal Nor Libertarian: A Natural Law Approach to Social Justice and Economic Rights.”
Anderson has made appearances on ABC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and Fox News. His work has been published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Harvard Health Policy Review, the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, First Things, the Claremont Review of Books, and National Review.
He is the John Paul II Teaching Fellow in Social Thought at the University of Dallas, a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University, and a Fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, as well as the Founding Editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey.
For 9 years he was the William E. Simon senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and has served as an adjunct professor of philosophy and political science at Christendom College, and a Visiting Fellow at the Veritas Center at Franciscan University. He has also served as an assistant editor of First Things.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Erica Smith is a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. She joined IJ in August 2011 and litigates cutting-edge constitutional cases protecting economic liberty, school choice, and free speech in federal and state courts.
Erica’s economic liberty work has a special focus on “food freedom.” Erica won Wisconsin home bakers the constitutional right to legally sell their goods in Kivirist v. Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. As a result, hundreds of home bakers across the state can now sell their cookies, cakes, and muffins without fear of fines or jail time. Erica also successfully defended the rights of home bakers and canners to fight against Minnesota’s arbitrary restrictions on selling their goods in Astramecki v. Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Erica is currently suing New Jersey—the last state to have a ban on selling homemade food. Erica’s legislative activities have also helped change the homemade food laws of several states.
Erica’s educational choice work gives parents the opportunity to guide the education of their children. She was the lead attorney representing families in Asociación de Maestros v. Departamento de Educación, where she persuaded the Puerto Rico Supreme Court to reject a teachers union’s challenge to the Commonwealth’s new voucher program. Erica was also part of the winning teams that protected both Georgia and New Hampshire’s tax-credit scholarship programs at the state supreme courts in Gaddy v. Georgia Department of Revenue and Duncan v. State of New Hampshire. She is currently fighting to protect Montana’s school choice program at the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, Erica testifies as to the constitutionality of other educational choice programs across the country.
Erica’s free speech work includes her successful defense of a family’s right to use signs to advertise its gym in Fears v. City of Sacramento. She was part of the team that successfully defended Central Radio Company’s right to protest the illegal taking of its land in Central Radio Co. v. City of Norfolk. Most recently, Erica won the right of a family-owned video game store to advertise using a 9-foot inflatable Mario in Fisher v. Town of Orange Park.
Erica has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS This Morning, and Fox & Friends, and her writing has been published in the Washington Times, New York Post, Times-Free Press, The Virginian-Pilot, National Law Journal, and Federalist Society Review. She has also been quoted in media outlets across the nation, including the New York Times and Washington Post.
Before joining IJ, Erica served as a law clerk for the Honorable Terrence Boyle of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Erica received her law degree cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2010. Erica received her undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Stony Brook University’s Honors College in 2007, where she studied literature and journalism.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
2016 National Lawyers Convention Slideshow
Short Video
Thank you for making 2016 such a great year for the Federalist Society. To celebrate,...
When Enforcing the Constitution Means Rejecting Precedent: A Reply to Greg Weiner
Part bull, part man, and nourished by Athenian blood, the minotaur has been the stuff...
McCrory v. Harris and Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections - Post-Argument SCOTUScast
John J. Park
SCOTUScast 12-21-16 featuring Jack Park
On December 5, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in McCrory v. Harris and...
Beckles v. United States - Post-Argument SCOTUScast
Carissa Byrne Hessick
SCOTUScast 12-21-16 featuring Carissa Byrne Hessick
On November 28, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Beckles v. United States....
Salman v. United States - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
Thaya Brook Knight
SCOTUScast 12-21-16 featuring Thaya Brook Knight
On December 6, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Salman v. United States. Bassam Yacoub Salman...
Conscience Cases and Religious Liberty - Podcast
Ryan T. Anderson, Anthony Kreis
Religious Liberties Practice Group Podcast
With the legalization of gay marriage, numerous cases have arisen in which private citizens have...
An Obama mandate to trim outmoded rules is one Trump should keep
Here’s the way I began my commentary, “One Obama Executive Order That Makes Sense,” published...
Topics
Silvester v. Harris: Watered-Down Intermediate Scrutiny
In Silvester v. Harris, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a California law requiring...
Blaine Amendments and the Unconstitutionality of Excluding Religious Options From School Choice Programs
Erica Smith
Federalist Society Review, Volume 18
Note from the Editor: This article discusses the school choice movement and how Blaine Amendments...
What is "Zero Rating"?
Roslyn Layton
Short video featuring Roslyn Layton
What are the advantages of offering a sample-size portion of the Internet? Roslyn Layton, Visiting...